The Last of Our Cotat: Pascal Cotat's 2024s from Chavignol
Sep 17, 2026
In May we offered a small allocation from the Cotat cousins of Chavignol. The François Cotat Rosé 2023, on the far right of the photo, has since sold out. What remains is a short stack of Pascal Cotat's 2024s: fewer than five bottles each of Les Monts Damnés, La Grande Côte, and his Chavignol Rosé.
The Cotat name has carried weight in Chavignol since 1947, when brothers Francis and Paul Cotat began making wine together from the village's hillside vineyards. They made the wine in one cellar and sold it under two labels. When the brothers retired in the 1990s, the vines passed to their sons: Pascal, son of Francis, and François, son of Paul. The cousins now work from separate cellars (Pascal's is in the town of Sancerre), and both still make wine the way their fathers did.
This is not the Sancerre most people know. Chavignol's "terres blanches" are clay and limestone over chalk, the same vein that runs under Chablis. Pascal works fewer than three hectares. He picks by hand and very late, ferments with native yeasts in older demi-muids and larger casks, and bottles without fining or filtration. It says so right on the label: "Ni collé, ni filtré." The wines are dense and saline. In youth they can be reticent and sometimes carry a touch of residual sugar. They are distinctive enough that in certain vintages Cotat wines were refused the Sancerre appellation for being "atypical." Give them time in the cellar and they become some of the most singular Sauvignon Blanc you can drink.
Pascal Cotat Sancerre Les Monts Damnés 2024
Les Monts Damnés is Chavignol's most storied vineyard: a steep hillside of thin clay and limestone topsoil over pure chalk, worked by hand. Pascal's 2024 is dense, smoky, and saline, with citrus pith, ripe orchard fruit, and a long mineral finish. It drinks well now with a decant, and it is built for a decade or more in the cellar.
Pascal Cotat Sancerre La Grande Côte 2024
La Grande Côte brings clay-rich soils and vines more than 60 years old, and it gives the deepest, most structured wine in Pascal's lineup. Expect laser-cut minerality, vibrant salinity, and white pith in youth, moving toward honey and stone with age. We would start opening bottles in five years and expect it to hit its stride in ten to fifteen.
Pascal Cotat Chavignol Rosé 2024
This is not a pool-side rosé. Pascal makes it from Pinot Noir grown in Chavignol and raises it in old wood, the same way he handles his whites. Look closely at the label and you will see it is bottled as Vin de France rather than Sancerre. What is in the bottle is pure Chavignol: structured, saline, and mineral, with a long finish. It is a rosé for the dinner table, and one of the few that rewards a few years in the cellar.
Production is tiny, and these are the last bottles we have. First come, first served.
